A wonderful new alternate-history series with dragons! Anequs lives with her family on the island of Masquapaug; her people have lived through the colonization and invasion of settlers from a white, Norse culture who now have cities, trains, universities, and industry on the mainland of the north-eastern part of America, though countries have different names in this story. Also, every region has its own dragons, though Anequs' people haven't seen one of their native dragons in 200 years, since the Great Dying. When Anequs finds a dragon's egg she initially plans to raise it at home, with all of the songs, dances, and stories of her community. But the Anglish have laws about dragons and one of them is that all future dragoneers must train at an academy; if they don't learn to control their dragon's breath, which can break things down to their elemental parts, the dragon will be killed. This is a very smart and thoughtful alternate history. I loved the indigenous lens, and the fact that Anequs sees through the bullshit rules of her school and doesn't let her self worth be judged by an outside culture. If I have one complain it's that the book had too many made up words; I'm fine with the fact nearly every place had two or three different names, but I didn't need made up names for the periodic table of elements. But I'm still very interested in reading the sequel and to see where this story goes!